Ray Kurzweil, along with other futurists (Vernor Vinge, for instance) tend to look at the space past where the rest of us see our futures. There is plenty in the news every day about possibilities in the short term future. Kurzweil is looking at technology in twenty, thirty years in the future, sometimes further.
I see more and more about the term singularity as used by some futurists and cyberneticists) about the possible future where machine thinking surpasses ours. One of the milestones in this futurist scenario may be a computer passing the Turing test. As I have covered before (and you can easily find all that you want by searching for Turing Test), a Turing Test could be best explained as the simplest way to interact with another intelligence (i.e. via a keyboard and a computer screen). This if a Turing Test as trading Instant Messages with another intelligence… The test is to be able to determine (to your own sensibilities) whether you are talking to something (or someone) who is conscious and sentient.
It goes without saying that we don’t have computers which can pass a test like this…yet.
Ray Kurzweil thinks that this will likely happen within the next 20 years or so, and wants to be around to see it.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/16-04/ff_kurzweil
Kurzweil’s notion of a singularity is taken from cosmology, in which it signifies a border in space-time beyond which normal rules of measurement do not apply (the edge of a black hole, for example). The word was first used to describe a crucial moment in the evolution of humanity by the great mathematician John von Neumann. One day in the 1950s, while talking with his colleague Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann began discussing the ever-accelerating pace of technological change, which, he said, "gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue."
Many years later, this idea was picked up by another mathematician, the professor and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge, who added an additional twist. Vinge linked the singularity directly with improvements in computer hardware. This put the future on a schedule. He could look at how quickly computers were improving and make an educated guess about when the singularity would arrive. "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence," Vinge wrote at the beginning of his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era. "Shortly after, the human era will be ended." According to Vinge, superintelligent machines will take charge of their own evolution, creating ever smarter successors. Humans will become bystanders in history, too dull in comparison with their devices to make any decisions that matter.
Kurzweil transformed the singularity from an interesting speculation into a social movement. His best-selling books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near cover everything from unsolved problems in neuroscience to the question of whether intelligent machines should have legal rights. But the crucial thing that Kurzweil did was to make the end of the human era seem actionable: He argues that while artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, it will not make human consciousness irrelevant. The first AIs will be created, he says, as add-ons to human intelligence, modeled on our actual brains and used to extend our human reach. AIs will help us see and hear better. They will give us better memories and help us fight disease. Eventually, AIs will allow us to conquer death itself. The singularity won’t destroy us, Kurzweil says. Instead, it will immortalize us.
Ray Kurzweil about new words, software, and empathy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8_jz9QlrUI&feature=player_embedded
Kurzweil Is Confident Machines Will Pass Turing Test by 2029
http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/04/kurzweil-is-confident-machines-will-pass-turing-test-by-2029-video-2
Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence
http://www.kurzweilai.net
I tend toward being an enlightened skeptic about some of the further ideas implied by Kurzweil and others…that is I am more than willing to be convinced, but until then I will keep track of these issues…they certainly are a fascinating change of pace from today’s news contains
